Earlier in June, I was busy working on 20+ illustrations for this book called《觀城記－－做個有情有義的香港人》, written by 天航 and published by {格子盒作室 | gezi workstation}. The book is now published and is available at the HK Book Fair; it should be available at book stores such as The Commercial Press after the book fair too.

It was an interesting experience to work on this project. I spent quite a lot of time on research, especially when drawing the landmark places and the celebrities. The drawing style is quite different from my usual style, as I found myself drawing more carefully and I tried to attend to more details. Usually, I don’t even made pencil sketches for my ink drawings and my ink drawing by itself would look kind of incomplete without adding color. However, while working on this book, I found myself not only drawing pencil sketches, I kept making changes to some tiny details. As I was told that only a few drawings might be printed in color, and I didn’t know which one will get picked, I had to draw them all as if they will only be printed in black and white first. It was a good experience to challenge myself to try something different and I’m happy about how it turned out.

As I was rushing for the last few drawings, Singapore was affected by the most horrible haze in history. It was so bad that I can smell the smoke once I got out of the bedroom, which has air conditioning. I tried working on my work table but I just couldn’t stand the nasty smell and had to retreat back to my bedroom. The following is one of the drawings that I drew on my bed instead of proper drawing table. I think I had drawn more than 100 motorbikes including the drafts…

Taipei Motorbikes

Thanks to the editor of the book, Ah Ding, who is also a good friend of mine, for inviting me to join this project; and to the author of the book, 天航, who kindly agree to use my illustrations. It is a really amazing feeling to see a book with my illustrations published, it made me smile just to think about it. :)

Picked up this book at a secondhand book sales for only S$4 last month. Finished reading it not long ago, and one day after i finished this drawing, it somehow reminds me of Miss Prym, the character of the novel.

I have quite a number of sketchbooks and journals, each have a ‘specific’ function… but sometimes I forget which book is for which function. I just realized that I have started on 10 books, and have 10 new ones waiting for me to fill them up! So one of my art resolutions this year is to finish all these sketchbooks.. so that I can get new ones :))